Month: October 2015

Surprise. Maybe for all of us. Twitter now has a poll button, same as facebook or google+. Previously, you may use an external site like Straw Poll or your own website to do this.

Now if you want to ask for a public opinion you can use twitter poll for that. This is one of feature you will like if you are a poll creator. Because as far as I know, twitter is a great place to ask for public opinion. Sadly, twitter only has 2 option answer.

Yup, only 2 option can be made per question. Which is quite annoying considering poll usually have more than 2 option. Basically 2 option is only available for question that the answer is yes or no. So if you need to create poll with 2 more answer, then you may consider old way to do that. There is great and simple poll creator outhere.

Is there possibility for Twitter to increase poll answer more than 2? I don’t know yet. But for now, I think i will stick with old way to ask a public opinion.

Couple days ago, I encounter error DXSDK_DIR is not set or something like that when compiling a project in Visual Studio. Well, that weird, I’m sure I already have DXSDK since forever.

I’m trying to browse the internet a bit and I found that DirectX SDK is already included in Windows SDK. There is no need for me to install DirectX SDK, but it said that DXSDK_DIR is not set. It’s confusing.

I found this problem when I try building SDL. SDL is a good library, but it’s pretty old library. It still got an update, but it’s an old library.

It turns out that DXSDK it is really already installed and exists within Windows SDK, but SDL library doesn’t completely adjust to the new change. They still use the old path where you must install DirectX SDK library and add an environment variable with DXSDK_DIR and contain path to your installed Direct SDK directory.

There is couple ways to fix this, but I will use the easy fix for this. You just need to install DirectX SDK (June 2010) to your system.

With this, you may have double DirectX SDK library in your system, but as far as I know they don’t conflict with each other since they are just an SDK. But it still an easy fix since you don’t need to change the library you use or anything like that.

I try to install DirextX SDK (June 2010) in hope to fix missing DXSDK_DIR is not found on visual studio error. Unfortunately, I encounter S1023 error when trying to install them. And there’s no description what the error is.

I found out that this issue is known issue and luckily for us this issue can be fixed easily and pretty straight forward. Here are step by step:

When you building an Ogre3d from source, you will need to build it dependencies first. You can download it one by one and build it yourself, or you can use dependencies that provided by ogre team to build its dependencies easily. I try to build Ogre3d dependencies using what they provide on Bitbucket but it failed before I can even build it.

It’s the type of error I really bad with because I’m not really experienced with build system like CMAKE and usually I don’t know how to fix it. Here what the error look like:

Thankfully this error has an easy fix. It turns out you missing one of library dependencies they provide, so it not Ogre team fault. When you encounter this error, maybe you use “Download this repository” link on Bitbucket.

My advice, don’t use “Download this repository” link.

Why? Because this is what make this error in the first place. Some library is not downloaded through this link. More specifically, SDL library. They use HG (Mercurial for you who doesn’t know) for SDL. And “Download this repository” only download git repository. That why if you use “Download this repository” SDL is not downloaded and the error will occur.

Instead, you can use Clone Repository, Fork or whatever you may use to download Ogre dependencies.

Just a quick reminder. One of my favorite game series, Fallout 4 will launch at 10 November 2015 which is 2 week after this post published.

For you who doesn’t own Fallout 4 yet, you may pre-order them before it launched. Or if for whatever reason you want to wait until it was launched like me, you can play previous games (Fallout New Vegas or Fallout 3) or tycoon fallout (Fallout Shelter) until it came out.

YouTube Red? What is it? A new porn site? Seriously, why they name it YouTube Red? I mean when I hear that name I feel like it is one of those websites that contain mature content or something like that which is not safe for work. Google announced YouTube Red, paid $10 per month subscription version of Youtube where you got more feature that Youtube. So what you got if you subscribe to YouTube Red? I mean, what the difference between YouTube vs YouTube with “Red”?

Here are some of what I learn.

Ads Free

Yup, its ads free youtube. For those who hate Ads for whatever reason it is, you will love this. Finally, just YouTube without Ads. But maybe you will ask question like this, why use YouTube Red when you can use Ads Block?

That correct idea actually, you can use Ads Block plugin for blocking ads. But if you are a phone or tablet users, you can’t really use ads block plugin on YouTube app. So if you usually using phone or tablet to stream a youtube video, you may want to subscribe to Youtube red.

Offline playback

Youtube Red offer offline playback, which mean you can store your selected video offline on iOS and Android phone or tablet for up to 30 days. If you are often in a place that doesn’t have an internet connection, wi-fi or data cellular for a whatever reason and you still want to watch, maybe this is great for you.

Or if you using Android you can download some YouTube download at Play Store to store it offline.

Google Play Music

You can play all music unlimited in Google Play Music if you subscribe to Youtube Red. For you who don’t know what is Google Play Music is, it was music streaming music service that similar to Spotify and Apple Music.

And if you already subscribe to Google Play Music All Access, then you will automatically get Youtube Red with no extra payment.

Background Video

With this, you can finally play a video in a background. If you using YouTube to stream a music or podcast video or something similar “often”, you may get annoyed when you can’t play them in a background.

Maybe you want to use a browser while listening to a music, well you can use Apple Music or Spotify though for this one. Maybe you want to work on email when listening to podcast or conference video on youtube. Whatever reason is, you may want this feature.

So if you interested on Youtube red, you may want to wait a little bit. Because it planned for the US only at 28 October, but they said that they would add more country as well.

I found a simple but unique games that let you play a game solely on twitter. This game doesn’t require you tweeting a tweet or sign up to an app on twitter, just click the link and choose your option provided on a tweet. If you have a 10-30 minutes today and have a twitter account, you may want to hop into twitter right now.

This is a very clever way of using social media as a gaming platform. I don’t want to spoiler anything, just play the game.

I saw this post today and thinking about it for a while. It’s quite an interesting concept when you usually try to create a to-do list to become more productive, for this you make a to-do list so you can play and get things done in games.

It sound silly at first but if you think it long enough, it actually makes sense for some reason. Here’s why I think that this is somewhat useful:’

Quest List is not really good

In some games like Skyrim, quest/journal list is to display what quest you have or can take and show you if it finished/completed. But if you play long enough at games that have many Quest like in Skyrim, this can cause a problem.

You can’t finish quest as many as you can take them. I experience this when I was playing Skyrim without Fast-Travel. Nope, not even with a carriage since I just walking everywhere. Or like in the Witcher 3 where you can only track one quest at a time which is harder to do quick near quest since you aren’t aware there’s quest you need to do near you.

With a to-do list, you can create better quest system that fit your playstyle since you can just add or delete them without affecting your playthrough. Here is a few example:

Kill a Dragon near Riften

Join Theives Guild

Pick Inigo from Riften Jail

and So on

And if you don’t want or can’t alt-tab in game, you can always use other devices such as your phone or tablet. You can also use your own favorite to do list manager to manage like Wunderlist which is my favorite because I like the interface (maybe easy to use too).

To do list can give you better explanation

For some games I play. Quest description doesn’t really give me enough explanation for me to understand what I need to do to finish that quest. This may don’t matter for people that just do quest using in-game marking or similar, but for me that turn off quest marker this is preventing me from finishing my quest since it was really hard to guess what I should do. Some people feel the same way as I did, and proof for that is someone actually create a mod for Skyrim called “Even Better Quest Objectives” to fix this issue.

Or you can just paste a link to tutorial or guide for the quest you want to do.

Game Backlog

If you have many games that you haven’t played yet, you may want to write it down so you won’t forget to play them when you have time. To-Do list is a perfect place to write them down because that what they are for.

For example:

Prison Architect Escape mode

New Character Skyrim

Portal 2

Crysis 3

Help You Pick Up After Time Away from a Game

If you love gaming but busy in real life, you may forget about what you want to do next from last time you play that game since you haven’t played them for a long time. To do list may help you remember what to do next and what you do before the current save is. I think this is the most useful one since I can have a long project to do for 1-3 month or more without playing a game.

Character Roleplay

With to do list you can create a to-do list that isn’t related to a quest or in-game things like roleplay rule or self-created quest. When I play Skyrim I tend to create some self-rule like these:

Never use fast travel, not even carriage

Eat, sleep, drink and bath. You can do this with mod thought.

No steal, ever.

Never stay at city, because you are playing as bandit for example.

Or self-created quest that enhance my roleplay like:

Join Stromcloack first then betray them and join the Empire

Unlock all holds without fast travel or carriage

Get rich as bandit and create your own gang

Pick quest that fit your character

And of course it not limited to this list.

Conclusion

This concept actually opens my mind that to-do list isn’t limited for real life productivity. You can use them for fun things like gaming, movie or even create a story list based. You can try and tell me if it help you to experience gaming better. Or if you have some way to make gaming better that I haven’t tried yet feel free to leave a comment on these post or site.

If you haven’t installed Windows 10 yet or want to clean install windows 10. You may wonder how to get a Windows 10 ISO file to burn them to DVD. In this post I will guide you how to do that. Don’t worry, it’s quite easy because Microsoft already make us a tools for downloading them.

First thing first

Make sure you have what it need to download Windows 10, among them are:

Internet Connection (Duh!)

Have data storage that can contain Windows 10 ISO file. I think it around 3.11GB but it will be great if you have more.

If you want to burn them also, you may want DVD/USB Flash Drive to burn them. Same as above you need around 3.11GB or more.

Now you can begin downloading the tools to download Windows 10 ISO file I mentioned earlier. It’s called “Media Creation Tools”. You can download them in the link bellow. Don’t worry, the link is safe. It came from Microsoft link.

If the download done, then you can open them to begin the download. Here’s what it look like:

If you are using previous Windows version and want to upgrade the windows, you can choose “Upgrade this PC now”. But if you want to download Windows 10 ISO files, you can select “Create installation media for another PC” which what you want to do. The click next to begin upgrading or downloading depending of your choice.

Just wait until it’s done and you will have Windows 10 ISO file in your storage. Hope this help.

I have been using Steelseries Sensei for a while now, about 6 months now I think. And my impression is it was great mouse despite the design is so simple compared to other manufacture such as Razer. It comfortable in my hand, have a key profile for a specific application which is important and the color can be changed based on a profile.

But one thing I notice is that the mouse isn’t responding or moving until I press left click button. I found this issue only happen when the profile is changed or when I close my games and the profile change back to the default profile.

While this isn’t an issue for when playing a game, this leads to unresponsive mouse control when switching between application. I often switching between programs that have a different key profile for each application.

In my case:

At games like Dota 2, I’m using an extra button for using item and often switch to Chrome to browsing or change music playlist. My chrome has a profile too like Back/Forward history or Page down/Page up key for reading.

At Visual Studio, I’m using an extra button for inserting code template for .h or .cpp and switch to Chrome. This is the most case I encountered.

and much more.

I’m used to setting up some configuration first and use them later for my convenient. An issue like this may be sound simple and unimportant, but for me this issue really matter. It can hinder productivity because major unresponsiveness on the mouse. And when I need some quick shortcut like these, I really need them and fast.

But even though I rant about a little issue, I still think Steelseries Sensei is a great mouse and I’m not thinking about changing mouse soon. Maybe after it broke but for now, I have to live with this slight unresponsiveness.